On Saturday, Erling Haaland will try to achieve something against Brentford that no one has managed since 1946.

The Manchester City striker has scored a hat-trick in each of his last two Premier League games and if he can score another against Thomas Frank’s side at the Etihad Stadium this weekend, he will join a very exclusive list of players.

It has only happened four times that a player has scored three goals in three consecutive games in the English top division – and three of those were before 1930.

Here, The athlete tells the stories of these four opportunities and the men the 24-year-old Norwegian international wants to emulate.

Opponents: Liverpool, Leicester City, West Ham United

Osborne, Tottenham’s centre-forward, played 26 times in all competitions for the club during the 1924–25 season… and failed to score a single goal.

That summer, the offside rule was changed – the number of opposing players who had to be in front of an attacker to avoid being offside was reduced from three to two. Unsurprisingly, this led to more goals in games and more chances for Osborne and his fellow strikers (the goals per game ratio in the English top flight in 1925/26 was 3.69, compared to 2.58 the season before).

The England international (three appearances and zero goals at that point) scored twice away against Sheffield United in his first game of the 1925/26 season, and three more goals came in his next ten games, before Liverpool’s visit to White Hart Lane on 24 October, where the 29-year-old scored a hat-trick as Tottenham won 3-1.

A week later, Osborne – who was born near Cape Town in what is now South Africa – scored another three goals in the next game, away to Leicester. Tottenham lost that game 5-3, making it the only case on this list where a player scored his hat-trick in a losing effort.

The following Saturday, November 7, Osborne became the first player in English top-flight history to score a hat-trick in three consecutive matches as Tottenham beat West Ham 4-2 at home.

Frank Osborne, second from left, at a golf tournament in 1924 (Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)

Osborne is the only one of these four players not to have scored four goals in at least one of the games in question, and is also the only one not to have scored a hat-trick in the treble of trebles against Arsenal.

He failed to score in Tottenham’s next league match against Newcastle United, and he only managed one more top-flight hat-trick in his career: against Newcastle in January 1928 (four goals).

However, Osborne’s form in the 1925/26 season – he finished the season with 25 goals in 39 league games – earned him a return to the national team, and in May he scored a hat-trick against Belgium, the first time since the First World War that an English player had scored three goals in a match.

Tom Jennings, for Leeds United in 1926

Opponents: Arsenal, Liverpool, Blackburn Rovers

The Scotsman Jennings scored three hat-tricks in a row and took Leeds from 16th to seventh place in the early autumn of the 1926/27 season.

The striker joined the Yorkshire club from Scottish club Raith Rovers in 1925 and played every league game in his first full season (1925–26), scoring 26 goals.

The then 24-year-old began the 1926/27 season with three goals in seven league games, scoring three against visiting Arsenal on 25 September as Leeds won 4-1. Under the management of manager Arthur Fairclough, they travelled to Anfield on 2 October and Jennings scored four goals past Liverpool goalkeeper Arthur Riley, two goals in each half, to help his side to a 4-2 victory.

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A week later, Jennings scored another four goals as Leeds beat Blackburn Rovers 4-1 at Elland Road.

In Leeds’ next league game, away to Leicester, Jennings scored twice but failed to score a fourth consecutive hat-trick as they lost 3-2. Never before has a player come so close to four consecutive hat-tricks in the English top flight.

Jennings finished that season with 37 goals in all competitions (35 of them in the league). That total has only been surpassed twice in Leeds’ history – both times by John Charles (43 in 1953-54 and 39 in 1956-57), although Leeds were playing in the Second Division in the first of those seasons.

However, the club’s good run quickly ended after Jennings’ three hat-tricks: Fairclough’s team won only six of their last 32 league games and were relegated.

Dixie Dean, for Everton in 1928

Opponents: Burnley, Arsenal, Bolton Wanderers

Dean is arguably the best goalscorer in English football history. In the 1927/28 season he scored 60 goals in the First Division for Everton. No other player – neither before nor since – has scored even 50 goals in a season in the English top flight.

Dixie Dean leads Everton – and sets a target for Haaland (Barker/Getty Images)

Dean, who turned just 21 in January this season, played in 39 league games for Everton, scoring in 29 of them. He scored seven hat-tricks and his goals helped the club win the title for the first time in 13 years.

He reached the 60-goal mark by scoring seven times in the final two games of the season – four in a 5-3 win at Burnley on April 28 and then three at home to Arsenal in a 3-3 draw a week later, ending the season with two hat-tricks in a row.

Then, on the opening day of the 1928/29 season, Everton won 3-2 away against Bolton Wanderers, with Dean scoring all three goals to complete the hat-trick of all hat-tricks. The England international then failed to score in Everton’s next game against The Wednesday (now Sheffield Wednesday, who would go on to win the title).

This is the only one of four cases of three consecutive hat-tricks spanning two seasons.

In total, Dean scored 30 hat-tricks in the English top flight, a record. Haaland has eight, so he needs 23 more to beat that mark. Dean scored a hat-trick every 12.1 games on average during his career in the English top flight (30 in 362 appearances) and the Norwegian averages one every 8.6 games (eight in 69 games).

Jack Balmer, for Liverpool in 1946

Opponents: Portsmouth, Derby County, Arsenal

The 1946–47 season was the first to be completed in the English Football League since the outbreak of the Second World War. The top division consisted of the same 22 clubs that had competed in the 1939–40 season, when the season was abandoned after three games per team.

Liverpool won the title for the first time in 24 years, powered by strikers Balmer and Albert Stubbins, who both scored 24 league goals. Ten of Balmer’s 24 goals (42 percent) came in three consecutive games in November.

The then 30-year-old – Balmer is the oldest player on this list – scored all three goals in a 3-0 win over Portsmouth at Anfield on 9 November, before scoring four more in 17 minutes in George Kay’s side’s 4-1 victory at Derby a week later. Then on 23 November, Balmer completed a feat that no one has been able to match for almost 78 years by scoring his third consecutive hat-trick in a 4-2 home win over Arsenal.

He scored in the following away game at Blackpool and scored four more goals before Christmas, but his form dipped after that and from 25 December until the end of the season he scored just four times in 19 league games (before that date he had scored 20 goals in 20 games).

These were the only three hat-tricks ever scored by Balmer, who played his entire career for Liverpool from 1935 to 1952 and made over 300 appearances.

Haaland added to his hat-trick against Ipswich (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

Haaland has been in this position before.

Just before the start of the 2022–23 Premier League season, his first with City, he scored two consecutive hat-tricks at home against Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest, but could only score once in the next game, away against Aston Villa.

But with City playing at home to Brentford at 3pm on Saturday, there is a good chance he will join Osborne, Jennings, Dean and Balmer. (Haaland has scored 17 goals in his 13 league games at the Etihad Stadium by that kick-off time.)

This would be a remarkable achievement that we will not see again anytime soon.

Now it’s your turn, Erling.

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(Top photo: Haaland after his hat-trick against West Ham; Catherine Ivill/AMA via Getty Images)